The electric cooperative is having all the trees under the power lines cut, so we've asked the tree crew to dump the chipper debris on our land - it's a huge pile. In the past I've used the native grass which I would cut with a sickle.

Looks great. For some reason it never occurred to me to *dig* a hole and fill it with wood, I've been doing the stack the wood and cover it method, but in my hugel bed area I've ran out of easily accessible fill dirt so I guess my next task is to just bury a bunch of logs =)

The asparagus was the ONLY permanent planting which survived the drought, besides cactus. The orchard trees in the same setting died. They are ALL dead. The asparagus is alive and growing at this moment.

I just found this thread. Great idea and the pictures really help get the point across. I love following peoples progress in permaculture, I'm guessing others do too. Maybe I'll start a similar one for our place. Thanks.

Thanks. Yes, the soil when I dug that hole was painfully dry. We've had some rain since so things are better now. I'm rethinking the asparagus garden a bit and contemplating using the "Back to Eden" deep mulch method on the next part of it, because I have so much buried wood bed area to do in the kitchen garden, I don't think I'll have the energy to do all that digging and wood collecting for the asparagus garden. It will be interesting to see how the different methods perform.

That's a lot of flat, smelly critters! Nah, calves/lambs would have died in bulk one way or another on farms;
possums used to get gin-trapped or poisoned with cyanide. Nasty ways to go.
So much for the country idyll!

We had three inches of rain last night and our rainharvesting basin filled for the first time since it was dug. This is at the northeast corner of our land along the course of a seasonal stream. The basin isn't meant to hold water permanently, only long enough to let it soak in and to slow it so it doesn't become a catastrophic flood lower down on our land. We need a few more of these basins:

Thanks! We've been very fortunate to have some nice rains though the warm temperatures seemed to come especially early this year and it never got very cold. A lot of my kitchen garden plants wintered over because it was so warm.

I clicked on your link to have a bit of a look. It is all brilliant and inspiring. Thanks for sharing! It is really great how, even when you have had to scrap ideas and restart, you have kept on keeping on. Really well done, and I am sure that after a while if not already your neighbours will start to see the difference and be inspired too.

Empowerment, not just protest. My aim is to get as many folk as poss growing non-hybrid/patented food freely everywhere! There are more of us on bottom of pyramid, so we have the power!

Thank you. It is challenging for sure. I wish I were one of those people who can just toss plants or animals out there and they thrive,, but I'm not. Sadly all the Catfish in the aquaponics died, though apparently there are still some Bluegill. Poultry are an ongoing challenge because of predators, mostly raccoons, and are not particularly well integrated into the rest of the system. I feel my progress is glacially slow but see gradual improvement. My dreams exceed my abilities, though.

Thanks for all of the info! I am going to start a thread like this for my own homestead (not a fan of that word, but there aren't really any better than I can think of... in conversation I usually use farm, but that's not really accurate either!). I, too, have far more ideas than time or resources to impliment them, but the more I get accomplished the more energy I have to do more. It also helps that my kids are now 5 and 3, so they're a lot more independent than the last two summers. My first summer here I did a lot of gardening with a 25 lb toddler strapped to my back! But in a lot of ways I'm glad my kids limited me in the last two years, because had I had the time to do a lot those first years I wouldn't have known what I know now about permaculture, no till gardening, closed loop systems, and methods like sheet mulching and hugelkultur to increase organic matter and reduce outside water... I would have done a lot of things I would now need to undo or change.

I'm just now learning more about permaculture, though. I had resisted it before because I was worried it would up-end all I had known and done with my deep dug raised bed gardening before in my vegetable garden. I finally gave in and read gaia's gardens and I'm so glad I did it at this particular moment. While the bed shape I have already isn't ideal, it hasn't made me want to completely change my existing garden (since space isn't an issue for me) and it has given me guidance and direction for the rest of my 3 acres, which previously I had been at a loss with. I know that makes those of you with small urban lots want to puke, but having too much space and too little guidance is a problem, too

Also, let's talk about this edible prairie garden... I don't know if I have the ideal locale for this, but it's interesting and I can think of a few spots in my yard where it would be worth a try (I live in Central MN... I need to change my profile to reflect that, but we're more forest than prairie here). Even if not it may be something my sister in Nebraska may be interested in. Where did you get info on what to plant, where did you get your plants/seeds, or any other tips on this topic?

I wish I knew where to turn for help with improving my design and how to integrate the elements with each other and the water harvesting. I don't know how to get in touch with any permaculturists in my area, the nearest ones seem about 100 miles away. Also I don't have money to pay someone for a design.

How much of your other ~19 acres is above your 1-acre-ish homestead area? Given the availability of an excavator and application of a level, all that area should be working to help move water to where you need it, when you get it. I gather you've made a start on that, given the one picture of the rain basin that's not on this map. As for the parts below, just work to help them move water into the ground, as opposed to letting it run away. But given finite time, start with the projects that will (gently) bring surface water into the homestead area, and work further out until you hit the edges of the high-side, then work on the lower parts as you can.

Muddling towards a more permanent agriculture. Not after a guru or a religion, just a functional garden.

The homestead is almost exactly in the middle of the property, with half above and half below. The homestead is slightly uphill from the major drainage of the two seasonal creeks, so serious flooding of the house itself is very unlikely. The lower garden (Prairie Garden and Asparagus Garden on the map) has been under about four inches of water in the past. During one flood event a wall of water came through between the house and the shop, knocking over fences and small trees. As we can only expect these kinds of events to get worse with global warming, we seriously need to address these water issues but have limited financial and physical resources. It's been easy to forget about the flooding during the drought, in which we had a couple years with no heavy rain, but the recent flood (minor) reminded me I need to get serious about it again.

I hope to improve this situation by putting a swale out in that field.

Lori Crouch

Joined: Sep 26, 2011
Posts: 104
Location: Amarillo, TX.

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posted May 14, 2012 11:07:27

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We've been getting a ton of rain up here too the past few weeks. I thought on our tiny property that is usually devoid of water that swales would be ridiculous to add. However I am watching the flow of water from the house and cement walkways and devising some plans. I had already made some sunken garden beds around the front walkways to collect rain runoff and that is certainly helping quite a bit. I've only been here for two years and I've never seen this much rain.